Business Concentrates BUSINESS MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
▸ Italmatch to acquire specialties firm Italmatch Chemicals has agreed to buy U.S. chemical maker Detrex for $43 million. Shareholders who own 52% of Detrex have agreed to the takeover. The acquisition will bring together performance additives maker Italmatch, which has $400 million in annual sales, with Detrex, which has $50 million in annual sales of additives and high-purity hydrochloric acid. Italmatch, owned by the private equity firm Ardian, has made several acquisitions in the past two years, including Solvay’s business in phosphonates for desalination, organophosphonates maker Compass Chemical, and precious metal recovery firm Magpie Polymers.—MARC REISCH
START-UPS
▸ BASF will sponsor Greentown incubator Greentown Labs in Somerville, Mass., calls itself the largest cleantech start-up incubator in the U.S. Now, BASF will be the found-
A start-up hopeful works on a prototype at incubator Greentown Labs. ing sponsor of Greentown’s new Global Center for Cleantech Innovation. The addition will include a 24-bench wet lab space for innovations in water, materials, and green chemistry. It will expand the incubator into a 9,300-m2 campus complete with prototyping lab space, offices for more than 100 start-ups, electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle charging, and an event space.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
EUROPE
▸ Indorama to buy Portuguese PTA plant The Thai polyester giant Indorama Ventures is purchasing Artlant PTA, which
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | NOVEMBER 20, 2017
Trump’s China visit yields several deals President Donald J. Trump’s visit to China resulted in several chemical-related deals, many of them tentative, between Chinese and U.S. companies. The most ambitious deal was the most vague: China Energy Investment’s plan to invest $84 billion in shale gas development and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia. Separately, the new company American Ethane signed an agreement to supply $26 billion worth of Gulf Coast ethane over 20 years to feed a petrochemical complex that Nanshan Group plans to build in China. Among more tangible deals, Air Products & Chemicals agreed to invest in a $3.5 billion Chinese coal gasification venture, and Thermo Fisher Scientific signed memorandums of understanding with three Chinese entities to supply $35 million worth of scientific instruments over the coming year for medical research. Dow Chemical agreed to collaborate with Mobike, one of China’s largest bike-sharing companies, to develop lighter and more environmentally friendly bicycles.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
runs a purified terephthalic acid plant in Sines, Portugal. The facility has the capacity for 700,000 metric tons per year of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) raw material, making it Europe’s second-largest PTA plant. It was commissioned in 2012 by the polyester maker La Seda de Barcelona, which went bankrupt about a year later. Indorama says the plant helps back-integrate its PET business.—ALEX TULLO
INORGANIC CHEMICALS
fuel plants. Fulcrum’s first facility is under construction in Nevada; the $205 million gasification operation will take in municipal solid waste and produce 38 million L of jet fuel annually. BP has also agreed to buy 190 million L of fuel per year for 10 years. Fulcrum’s other partners are United Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Waste Management.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
OUTSOURCING
▸ Avista boosts drug ▸ Lanxess to acquire active capacity Solvay phosphorus unit Lanxess has agreed to purchase Solvay’s U.S. phosphorus chemicals business. The main asset involved is a plant in Charleston, S.C., that employs 90 people and makes phosphorus chloride as well as derivatives such as agrochemical intermediates and flame retardants. Annual sales are about $75 million. Lanxess purchased a major flame retardants maker, Chemtura, in April.—ALEX TULLO
BIOFUELS
▸ BP backs U.S. waste-to-fuel firm BP will invest $30 million in Fulcrum BioEnergy to accelerate Fulcrum’s plans to develop second and third waste-to-jet-
Avista Pharma Solutions has doubled active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production capacity at its Longmont, Colo., site. As part of the project, the company upgraded three API manufacturing suites
One of three new 200-L Pfaudler reactors paired with GL Filtration dryers at Avista’s facility. and added a fourth. Avista was formed in 2015 when Ampersand Capital Partners combined Array BioPharma’s chemistry facility in Longmont with Scynexis’s contract R&D assets in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and Accuratus Lab Services in Eagan, Minn.—RICK MULLIN
